How Subway Rides Create Critical Thinking

An Intersection

I am a shape shifter. I shift my stance as my role as researcher changes and morphs daily as I encounter others. I have been filled up by several revelations from clients this past week. In a team meeting, the unit chief was reporting an evaluation he completed. At the end of his report, he noted how this boy stated “I think I’m having trouble with the idea of growing up”. The previous day in session, a client of mine struggled with “existing” in the world or finding meaning. She denied suicidal thoughts, but commented on how she has nothing to look forward to and feels like “I’m going to go back into the hole where I was before”. The only thing I could do at the time was validate her experience and provide a space for her to examine new meanings that were emerging for her. I felt sad as I reflected on these two statements. My sadness transcended being a therapist and having empathy towards these young people. I felt like I wanted to know more about her experience and how she might be able to reach a new level of transformation or even embodiment. I am slowly learning about the intersecting roles of therapist and researcher. I look to hold onto the therapist role and navigate through the murky waters of activist researcher. This transition is not easy especially being a clinician for a long time.

Critical train

My ride home from work is a daily grind. It is exhausting, yet riding on the subway provides opportunities to think about race, power, privilege and oppression. Since leaving Cambridge a few weeks ago, and transitioning back to work life, I have paid more attention to commuters on my journey back home. I have reflected on my internalized experience and ride the rails with shifting perspectives. Riding the subway can be a sensory overloading experience, yet surveying this environment can offer interesting ethnographic data. On my long ride home, I focus inward on the stories I have taken in during the day. In the periphery, I hear the cacophonous sounds of parent’s yelling at their children, others playing music without head phones, people sitting spreading their legs, and the aromatic smell of the homeless lying sprawled out taking up numerous seats. I question in the midst of chaos who has the power and who is privileged on the subways? Artists come on and bang their drums, not really caring about others personal space. This may be considered performance but is often with an unwilling audience. Young kids come on the train play music loudly, disrupting the cacophony of the subway by flipping on the poles, with little regard to pedestrians nearby. There are no constraints on the subway, and now I have a better understanding that these “performances” on the train are about survival. “This is how I exist” is the narrative I have in my head. Perhaps a projection of the difficulties in people’s lives. I struggle with the tension to learn more about diverse experiences, and understand the culture of the northern Bronx. I reflect on my pilot study and performance. If the arts are a way to have survival, perhaps moving performances to a less chaotic, more contained place can provide more opportunities for knowledge. Chang (2006), states “Advocates of the arts-for-healing commonly assert that dance, music, and art are universal languages” (p. 193). There is a desire for people to make art anywhere accessible as long as there is an audience that can appreciate the form, but also contribute to the artist’s economic survival.

Shifting reflections

As I prepare to embark on my pilot study, my critical lens is moving from a myopic, assumption based view of cultures, to greater recognition of questioning, difference, and identity. I attempt to bracket my assumptions and understand how individuals or cultures are constructed. Sanjani (2012), suggests how different cultures can be traumatized and there are assumptions that “culture is a fixed category and that entire cultures can be traumatized” (p. 187). Mayor (2012), reflects on performers conforming to “accepted roles of marked difference in order to be recognized” (p. 216). Oppression is what should be talked about as people within marginalized groups often struggle to survive, grow or exist. Oppression leads to disembodiment or lack of performative action that not only disrupts but limits the capacity to have utmost freedom. It is this disembodiment that leads to silencing and lack of performative action. Allegranti (2013), describes the “body politic” which is the social and biological perspective that “we consider our bodies changing over time within a network of developmental resources” (p.396). Boas (2006), calls for a mutuality or unification of cultural bodies where new meanings can “give rise to the larger body of culture” (p.111). Lastly, Caldwell & Johnson (2012) dissect conceptualizing how bodies consist of histories and how there is the capacity to shift away from “socially and historically predicated ideas” (p. 123).

My shifting ideas as a researcher is continuously flowing and filled with murkiness and questioning. I align with the notion that oppressed populations have been silenced. Maybe the “cops in the head” that Boal (1995) describes, has led to an internalized state of misunderstanding which has left groups feeling disempowered and unsure or resistant to break cultural dominant narratives (Hadley, 2013). Collaboration is essential for meanings to be translated and understood. By bringing performance out of the subways, into the streets, or in public theatrical forum, participants and audience members can engage in dialogue leading to positive linear trends promoting social change. Perhaps by engaging mentally ill adolescents in different expressive art therapy focus groups, newly formed relationships can bring positive outcomes to the community and change perceptions. Henderson & Gladding (1998) stated creative arts therapy techniques “allow counselors to assist clients in understanding their own connections and differences in relation to others” (p. 183).

Last stop on the critical train

Back on the train, I reflect on difference and a desire to understand what it is like living in the Bronx, a poor community where there is extreme poverty, I notice my difference or as Mayor describes “whiteness”. I am a white male, living in a middle class neighborhood, who is educated and a doctoral student. I feel like an outsider, like I am intruding into this community. A young boy enters my car with a box full of candies he is trying to sell. “I’m selling these candies so I don’t run the streets”. He is trying to survive, exist, looking to figure out what it is like to get older. In my ongoing research, I am excited about the opportunity to work with adolescents in the Bronx and learn about their experience as teenagers, living in a poor community, and what the possibilities are that can bring change to their identities. Maybe then there will be ways of existing and shifting to the murky transition of adolescence.

References

Allegranti, B. (2013). The politics of becoming bodies: Sex, gender and intersubjectivity in motion. Arts in Psychotherapy, 40, 394-403. doi:10.1016/j.aip.2013.05.017

Boal, A. (1995). The rainbow of desire: The Boal method of theatre and therapy. London: Routledge.

Boas. S. (2006). The body of culture: Transcultural competence in dance/movement therapy. In H. Payne (Ed.), Dance/Movement therapy: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). (pp. 111-130) London: Routledge.

Caldwell, C., & Johnson, R. (2012). Embodying difference: Addressing issues of diversity and social justice in dance/movement therapy research. In R.F. Cruz, & C.F. Berrol (Eds.), Dance/movement therapists in action: A working guide to research options. (pp. 121-140). Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas.

Chang, M. (2006). How do dance/movement therapists bring awareness of race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity into their practice? In S.C. Koch, & I. Brauninger (Eds.), Advances in dance/movement therapy: Theoretical perspectives and empirical findings (pp. 192-205). Germany: Logos Verlag.

Hadley, S. (2013). Dominant narratives: Complicity and the need for vigilance in the creative arts therapies. Arts in Psychotherapy, 40, 373-381. doi: 10.1016/j.aip.2013.05.007

Henderson, D.A., & Gladding, S.T. (1998). The creative arts in counseling: A multicultural perspective. Arts in Psychotherapy, 25(3), 183-187. doi: 0197-4556/98$1900+.00

Mayor, C. (2012). Playing with race: A theoretical framework and approach for creative arts therapists. Arts in Psychotherapy, 39, 214-219. doi: 10.1016/j.aip.2011.12.008

Sajnani, N. (2012). Response/ability: imagining a critical race feminist paradigm for the creative arts therapies. Arts in Psychotherapy, 39, 186-191. doi: 10.1016/j.aip.2011.12.009

#race #power #privilege #oppression #shifting #situatedness #projectconceptualization